New York Underworld
by caelia-writer
Summary: AU human. Mostly Alec's POV. A night at a crazy party thrown by Magnus Bane. May be later fantasy elements not related to the Shadowhunter universe.
1. A Night to Remember

CHARACTERS BELONG TO CASSANDRA CLARE. The plot is based partly on her books and partly on my own ideas. Mostly Alec's POV, because I freaking love him. AU human universe. Enjoy!

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><p>Isabelle admired her reflection in the fluff-framed mirror in her bedroom as she expertly applied her mascara, jet black eyes open wide. A swipe of strawberry lip gloss and a dusting of blush over her cheeks and she deemed her artistic work on her face complete.<p>

Now for the hard part.

She sprang off the chair and ran down the hall to Alec's room. The door was ajar, and she pushed it open quickly. Her elder brother was lying on his stomach on his bed, journal open in front of him, and the pages were covered in his looping script. He quickly slammed the book at Isabelle's sudden appearance. And then he took in her outfit and his eyes widened.

"Iz! Please tell me you are not going out in public dressed like that."

This statement only enforced Isabelle's opinion that her brother was hopeless in the realm of personal appearance.

"Yeah...please tell me you're not coming to the party in those wrecked jeans," she retorted.

"That's because I'm not coming. I told you already." He was still scrutinizing her strapless dress. He finally snorted and said, "come here". She did, and he yanked the dress up higher on her chest.

"There," he said, twitching his lip. "It's...acceptable." Isabelle rolled her eyes, grabbed his hand, and started to pull him off the bed.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"What do you think I'm doing? We're going to find Jace! We have a party to go to," she said, grinning.

* * *

><p>"Hey, bro," said Jace, punching Alec's shoulder. <em>Not really brothers<em>, Alec thought irritably. They were step-brothers, legally, and in every other way that mattered. And one particular way mattered very much to Alec.

They exited the house and walked towards the subway station. Isabelle had convinced Alec to put on a nicer shirt than the one he'd been wearing, and Jace looked sexy - as usual. Alec tried very hard not to look at him. He turned around and started walking backwards, watching their house get smaller and smaller in the distance. It was a dark grey brick house, two and a half stories high, surrounded by wrought iron and giant flowering bushes. Alec loved it. Almost as much as Alec loved New York. It was so easy to be anonymous in a city with such a big population, and with such a big percentage of that population too busy to care what anyone else around them was doing. It was relaxing. It was easy.

"Where are we even going?" he asked Isabelle.

"Out."

"Out _where_?"

"I thought you didn't care."

"I don't. You need someone to watch over you, though. And I just want to know where I'll be spending the whole rest of the evening."

"Guy by the name of Magnus Bane," Isabelle said. "Kaelie told me he throws crazy parties. Apparently everyone knows about them. How have I not been to one before?"

Alec looked at her. Her eyebrows were drawn together, and she gazed skyward as if contemplating serious philosophical questions. He laughed. Isabelle. He could never understand her adoration for these parties. She'd only managed to corral Alec into attending a handful of them with her before, during which he had sat in the corner drinking soda and failing miserably at hiding his discomfort. It was likely that tonight would not be any different...

* * *

><p>"We're almost there, I think," Isabelle said cheerfully. Jace clapped his hands together in celebration.<p>

"Which one is it?" Jace asked.

"That apartment down by the corner," Isabelle said. "The entire top floor is his, or something." A gust of wind passed through and she wrapped her arms around her barely-clad frame, shivering.

"And this is why you shouldn't have worn that dress," Alec said.

After being buzzed in, they entered the building and took the elevator to the seventeenth floor. There was a ping, and the doors slid open.

"Snazzy," Isabelle commented. There was a huge room with a high ceiling that was hung all over with glowing streamers. Strobe lights illuminated the dozens of guests, dancing to the loud music and drinking neon beverages. Alec took one look at it and started to jab his finger towards the elevator button that led back to the ground floor, but Isabelle caught at his arm and shook her head at him.

"Nuh-uh," she said, "you're going to have fun." And with a loud whoop she dragged him into the room after her.


	2. Magnus Bane

Much to Alec's annoyance, he soon found himself deserted by his siblings. Isabelle was dancing with a guy with long blond hair, and Jace was in the corner flirting with an extremely diminutive and annoying-looking redhead. He wondered at their ease in approaching strangers. Or maybe it was easier that way, when you had nothing to lose if you were turned down. He wouldn't know, he reflected sourly. He'd never so much as been on a date. Isabelle dated enough for the two of them, anyway. And Jace as well, although that was a fact he preferred to ignore...

"Well, hello," said a voice at his shoulder. "I don't believe I've ever seen you before."

Alec turned around, and caught his breath.

"Magnus Bane," the man said, holding out his hand for Alec to shake it. Alec quickly wiped his palm on his jeans before doing so. Electric shocks went through his body at the man's touch, pulsing just as strongly as the strobe lights.

"Alec – Alexander Lightwood," he managed to get out with only a slight hesitation.

"Nice to meet you, _Alexander_," Magnus said. He was gorgeous. Tall and lanky, but muscled, with shaggy black hair coated in glittering gel.

They talked for several minutes, and then several more. Alec lost track. He gushed about the glamour of his host's penthouse suite, about the view of New York from the windows, about anything that came to mind. He was sure that ninety percent of it was nonsensical nervous drabble, but he was trying, at least. And Magnus did seem rather amused, which was a good sign...right? He hoped.

Magnus fetched them two luminescent blue drinks. Alec was too nervous to ask what they were, and he suspected he didn't really want to know. He almost never drank, but this was different. He might as well try to have fun, if it would make Izzy happy. And then maybe she would stop dragging him to these ridiculous gatherings.

Their conversation continued. After Magnus had said something particularly funny that left them both laughing, he abruptly asked, "Why don't you come with me?"

"Okay," Alec said, out of breath from laughing and out of restraint from the drink. He let Magnus lead him down a short hallway and up a short, carpeted stairway. Magnus put his hand on the doorknob, held a finger up to his lips, and gestured Alec into the room beyond the door. It was a bedroom, Alec realized belatedly. The walls were black, with glowing green boxes providing the lighting. The carpet on the floor was thick and blue, and there was a purple mattress on the floor.

Alec began to protest, but Magnus grabbed his hands and held them to the wall above his head, and kissed him. Everything was a blur.

Magnus broke away and looked at Alec, his head cocked. "You beautiful angel boy," he said, and kissed him again. Then Magnus's hand on the button of his jeans jerked him back to reality.

He pulled away so forcefully that Magnus looked confused.

"Something wrong?" he asked with his eyebrows raised.

Alec faltered, trying to find a way to explain that didn't make him sound like a thirteen year old girl.

"No, this is good, this is really good. I just...I need...to watch Isabelle," he said, which actually seemed like a pretty good excuse to him, now that he had gotten it out of his mouth.

"Isabelle?" Magnus frowned. "Is she your girlfriend?"

Alec blushed. "No! That's gross! She's my sister. She's the reason I'm at this party. To make sure she doesn't do anything stupid."

Magnus's face went through several different expressions before he released Alec's hands and reached for the doorknob.

"Okay," he said, obviously thinking that this was a dismissal. Which it wasn't at all. Alec just needed to breathe.

"No," he said, "it's not like that. I'd like...I'd like...I think to come back to the next party you have, even if she doesn't."

Magnus finally seemed to understand how overwhelmed Alec was. He grinned.

"_Alexander_," he said. "You don't need to wait for a party." He winked, and shoved Alec out the door and back to his apparently delinquent sister.


	3. The Lightwoods

When they returned home, it was four in the morning. Alec edged the door open, preparing to sneak in, but there was no point, because their parents were still awake. Maryse was lying half-off the couch with a bottle of vodka in her hand, and Robert was pacing the room, ranting about something. He abruptly stopped when he saw his children return. Maryse hastily wiped away her tears.

Alec saw them and didn't see them at the same time. There was the reality, which he knew was unpleasant, but was unsure as to the extent of said unpleasantness. And then there was the idyllic past, the parents of his childhood, the memory parents superimposed over the present-day ones so strongly that it seemed to Alec as if the Robert and Maryse he was viewing now were the apparitions, and not the other way around.

He nodded in their direction, but none of the children felt like saying anything. They went straight up to their bedrooms. Alec locked his door and knelt down on his bed. He prayed for his sister and step-brother, and for his parents, especially for his parents, as always. But tonight he allowed himself a rare luxury: he had a request of his own.

And then he fell on his side and passed out.

* * *

><p>Alec woke to a pounding headache. He'd never been truly hungover before, and the part of him that was more like Jace and Isabelle than it was like Alec felt the pain as a badge of honor.<p>

But the rest of him just hurt.

Then he remembered the man he had met last night, the man he had let kiss him. He blushed furiously. What if Isabelle, or worse, Jace, had seen him? What if he had told them about it? What if he had told his _parents_ about it? _Dear God_. He dragged himself out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen. He could see Maryse passed out on the couch in the living room, which he tried not to think about too hard. The place was a mess. Alec frowned. The Lightwoods weren't exactly _poor_, but they didn't have endless reserves of cash to replace damaged things. He hated seeing the things his parents had worked so hard for in such a state of disrepair. He began cleaning up, clearing the dishes off the table and sweeping up broken glass from the floor. Creating order out of disorder had a sort of calming effect, and by the time he had made the place look respectable again, he no longer felt to embarrassed about his behavior the previous night.

Isabelle descended the stairs, her hair a tangled mess and her eyes bleary.

"Hey, Alec," she said. "Have fun last night? I didn't see you around much. Please tell me you didn't waste that opportunity hiding in the bathroom or something."

He ignored her question. "Where's Jace?"

Isabelle waved her hand airily. "Videogames," she said. Alec felt even better at this. If Jace was awake, that meant he hadn't noticed either. No way he wouldn't have been teasing Alec about it or joking with Izzy about it if he had.

"So what's the plan for today?" Isabelle asked.

"I have to go to work," Alec told her. "So please try to stay out of trouble." Alec worked at a mechanic shop on most days, since he was out of school, unlike Jace and Isabelle.

"Oh. Yes. Right. Work, very important stuff," Isabelle said. She reached into the fridge and grabbed the first thing she made contact with, a package of sliced ham. She looked at it, shrugged, and then took it up the stairs with her, shouting down to Alec something about how she was going to kick Jace's ass at his games.

Alec watched her go with a smile on his face, and then followed her back upstairs, quickly getting ready for work. But when he finally stepped out the front door, he paused for a long minute before walking in the opposite direction of the garage where he worked, and instead trying to remember the route he and his siblings had taken the night before.


	4. The More, The Merrier

The apartment was just as imposing as the man who lived there in the penthouse suite, Alec thought. He stood on the street and stared up at it. After several wrong turns he had finally arrived, but he wasn't sure what to do now that he was here. He hadn't been thinking that far ahead. What had gotten into him? He shook his head in disgust and started walking back. He was already very late for work.

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><p>The next day was Sunday, and in the evening he finally got up the nerve to go back. He spent a while trying to fix his appearance. He washed his hair and picked out his nicest black shirt (all of his shirts were black, but this was the nicest of them). And half an hour later, he found himself standing in front of the elevator at Magnus's apartment complex. There were a lot of people going in and out of the building during the day, so it was easy to get in rather inconspicuously. The elevator doors opened, full of people arriving home from work. Alec entered and glanced around at it's occupants: a bald man in a grey suit, a woman snapping angrily in a foreign language into her cell phone, and a lady with pale blonde curls in a revealing red dress.<p>

The elevator ascended, stopping periodically to let people out, until he and the blonde lady were the only people left. Alec shifted uncomfortably. As the elevator rose higher and higher towards the top floor, the woman began to glare at him suspiciously.

And then it hit Alec.

There was only one apartment on the top floor.

The elevator passed floors fifteen and sixteen. Alec cringed as there was a "ping!" and the doors slid open. He tried to fold himself into the corner. Magnus Bane stood on the other side, arms spread open.

"Camille!" he cried joyously. The lady gave him a kiss on the cheek, and then turned around to Alec.

"This young man here forgot to get off at his stop, he's not with-" she started to explain, but Magnus interrupted her with a gleeful cheer.

"Alexander! You met Camille! Wonderful. How ever did you find her?"

Camille and Alec looked equally uncomfortable from this statement.

"Well, what are you standing in there for?" Magnus grabbed Alec by the arm and dragged him into the room.

Camille cleared her throat. When she spoke, Alec noticed a trace of a French accent. "Magnus, darling, but I am confused. Who is this boy?"

Magnus looked slightly crestfallen at this. "But I thought...nevermind. Camille, this is one of the lovely guests who graced my party Friday night. Alexander, this is...a very old friend."

Alec and Camille looked at each other for a very long and very awkward moment. Magnus broke the silence with a statement that did absolutely nothing to diffuse the tension: "Come on then, let's have dinner! The more, the merrier!"

Camille raised one of her delicately shaped eyebrows.


End file.
